Monday, January 23, 2017

The Canadians troll the rest of the world by flaunting their absurdly petty problems.

What happened: Justin Trudeau, during a townhall event in Quebec, a famously French-speaking province, was asked a question in English, by a woman bitching that it's difficult to get government-funded mental healthcare in English, there in Quebec.

Meanwhile my French language skills are increasing, slowly but steadily. I'm getting a good handle on French numbers, thanks to practicing with my English-French iPhone app every day. But I still cannot imagine why the French have such a crazy numbering system - they count from one to sixty-nine in the English language style. OK, their teens are a little off - they say onze (11), douze (12), treize (13), quatorze (14) quinze (15) and seize (16) but then they give up on unique words for seventeen through nineteen and say ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine (dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf).

But then they switch it up from 70 - 100: They say sixty-eight, sixty-nine (soixante-huit, soixante-neuf) so far, so good, but then, instead of having a distinct word for "seventy" they go sixty-ten, sixty-eleven, sixty-twelve (soixante-dix, soixante et onze, soixante-douze) et. cetera. THEN instead of having a distinct word for eighty, they call it four twenty (quatre vingt) - presumably because 4 x 20 = 80. No I am not kidding. And then they use the same system as with seventy when they get to ninety. So if you want to say 99 you say quatre vingt dix-neuf - four twenty ten-nine. It's like you have to do math problems just to count.

The French do take their language very seriously - I just discovered they have the Académie Francais to police the purity of the French language:

The Académie, a council of 40 writers and artists, is entrusted with protecting French from “Anglo-Saxon” attacks and writing an official dictionary, of which the latest unfinished version began in 1992.

One of its tasks is to come up with French equivalents to unwanted English words that slip into French – for example turning “email” into “courriel”.

My activities & interests

My anti-racist bona fides

Although I was smeared on Tumblr by infamous bully Mikki Kendall and identitarian extremist K. Tempest Bradford (and thanks to the cozy relationship between Tumblr and Google, the smears show up in my search results), in fact I have a long history of opposing racism, and the evidence for the past 10 years is on this blog. Unhinged extremists like Kendall and Bradford don't care to know anything about the strangers they randomly smear. That's why they and the people who promote them like Verso books are horrible and don't help solve the problem of racism in the United States.